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I'm in the process of thinking up some ideas for objective markers, and as such I was pondering what mechanism the SM's would use for the re-supply of ammunition. Obviously the models don't accurately portray the full range of equipment an SM would take into battle (most notably in their absence of adequately sized ammo pouches!), but it's fair to say that even SM's won't reach a 1:1 ratio of shots fired to kils. Hence, at some point in the battle, whether it's a high-velocity strike or a grinding urban assault, the Marine is going to need to replenish his stocks. To this extent, any thoughts about this may be useful for the making of my markers. I like the idea of ammo-dumps and containers, but at the same time, it seems very static for a fluid and mobile force such as SM's.

So, thinking along the lines of a drop-pod, I had conceived the idea that possibly, the SM's would utilise a sort of small disposable drop-pod that could be fired down into battle to deliver ammunition right where it is needed (Think along the lines of the re-supply pods in Halo if you've played it at all.) That said, I open to any musings on the subject or examples already in the fluff.

I put this in Background, because I'd rather this was viewed from a fluff, concept point of view than a modelling point of view. Any help would be much appreciated.

I have nothing to help, but my own ideas: werher they do it by drop pod, or their transports (rhino, land raiders...) possess ammunition stockpiles for the Marines.
Remember, the marines need less supply than the others armies: no food (or little food), not a lot of ammo, no / little medicines..
Do we have any soldier here, to tell us the amount of supply that food, medicines and water represent compared to ammo ?

There's equipment drop pods in the Space Marine video game, and there's servitor-crewed supply Rhinos in a few novels.

@beast_gts - Those drop pods gave me the initial idea, but I thought they would use something smaller. I can't imagine you'd need something as big as a 10-man drop pod to resupply a fast moving force. IMHO, it would be a waste of a drop-pod for such a task, although I understand why the game designers used it as it's easily recognisable.

@godardc - I'm not a soldier myself, but I've read that modern British Infantry carry around 6 magazines as routine, alongside circa 200 rounds in 5.56 or 7.62 MG belts. Depending on the operation and demands this can vary to more or less. I'd imagine SM's operate with similar principles in mind, but I'd gather there will be a point where fresh rounds are needed. Naturally, as you say food and water is a secondary priority and it's likely that medical aid is also secondary due to their enhanced biology.

There's a picture where it shows where marines store their ammo, it's between their backpack and armour and it's something like 8 clips for a bolter? So they hold more on them than you would think.

And at least with the CSM novels, after they run out of all ammunition, they are still combat effective, even just swinging around the empty bolter and crushing faces with it. Plus, those combat knives.

SM aren't meant to be in it for the long haul sieges.
Mostly, they are used as "shock and/or what?" troops.

Get in, smash the insurgents, leave the mess for the gropos to sort out.

Besides, their guns are for when they are closing the gap to smush heads.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
I'm in the process of thinking up some ideas for objective markers, and as such I was pondering what mechanism the SM's would use for the re-supply of ammunition. Obviously the models don't accurately portray the full range of equipment an SM would take into battle (most notably in their absence of adequately sized ammo pouches!), but it's fair to say that even SM's won't reach a 1:1 ratio of shots fired to kils. Hence, at some point in the battle, whether it's a high-velocity strike or a grinding urban assault, the Marine is going to need to replenish his stocks. To this extent, any thoughts about this may be useful for the making of my markers. I like the idea of ammo-dumps and containers, but at the same time, it seems very static for a fluid and mobile force such as SM's.

So, thinking along the lines of a drop-pod, I had conceived the idea that possibly, the SM's would utilise a sort of small disposable drop-pod that could be fired down into battle to deliver ammunition right where it is needed (Think along the lines of the re-supply pods in Halo if you've played it at all.) That said, I open to any musings on the subject or examples already in the fluff.

I put this in Background, because I'd rather this was viewed from a fluff, concept point of view than a modelling point of view. Any help would be much appreciated.

Largely this sort of thing is mostly just ignored in 40k (it's really a Fantasy setting with a scifi skin, it really breaks down hard as a SciFi universe), there's really no description of any sort of drop pod resupply or what a Space Marine's battle load of ammunition is or anything like that, and in a lot of cases, the campaigns and battles described (especially something like Captain Shrike) would be impossible due to logistics issues. There's lots of things that *could* be done, but probably not for any sort of extended campaign as SM's are often depicted as engaging in.

 chromedog wrote:
SM aren't meant to be in it for the long haul sieges.
Mostly, they are used as "shock and/or what?" troops.

Get in, smash the insurgents, leave the mess for the gropos to sort out.

Besides, their guns are for when they are closing the gap to smush heads.

The problem is that they're routinely described as engaging in long haul sieges, extended conventional battles, long term guerilla wars, etc

Are they? It seems pretty clear they're used as shock troops and at least one novel outright states that protracted engagements are bad for Marines.
Do you mean all the novels are about sieges etc?

We have all sorts of examples where Marines engage in extended length sieges and engagements. The Armageddon wars with the Blood Angels/Black Templars/Salamanders engaging in solo operations often for weeks or more at a time, Shrike and his whole deal of years long behind-the-lines guerilla wars, the Minotarus or Charcaradons going off Emperor-knows-where as fleet based chapters for decades or centuries without direct resupply, the Imperial Fists and successors being ostensibly siege oriented chapters, the Black Templars engaging in years and decades long crusades (often, if not usually, by themselves), the Abyssal Crusade, the thirty year long Corinthian Crusade, etc.

I mean, they really *should* be bad at these kinds of engagements, but they're written about as engaging in this sort of thing all the time for whatever reason, which really should see them being extirpated at very high rates.

How big are epic scale drop pods? Could they be used for "ammo drop pods"?

The i am slaughter novel goes into depth when describing the resupply of imperial fists. I can't remember much of it except that there where supply trains and ammo drops.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Saving ammo and repairing gear /machines is an important theme in the first few books of that series

In reality units are general resupplied by other platoons who are patrolling.

For example when I was in the Marine Corps two platoons from our company would be outside the wire for 3 days. Another would be operating from base camp going on patrols daily. And the last was on rest. This would rotate in a 3 day cycle. If the platoons in extended patrols needed resupply the platoon operating from base camp would make the stop on their patrols to provide them with whatever was needed.

Our platoon was also responsible for most of our battalions hits on hard targets. Every marine in the breach and entry teams carried 8 mags + 1 in weapon. Vehicle gunners and drivers carried about 6. We stocked no less than a weeks worth of batteries and food/water in our vehicles as well as enough ammo in case an extended fire fight came up. We also carried several demo charges and anti armor weapons in case we needed to take out a building or something of that nature.

 Vaktathi wrote:
We have all sorts of examples where Marines engage in extended length sieges and engagements. The Armageddon wars with the Blood Angels/Black Templars/Salamanders engaging in solo operations often for weeks or more at a time, Shrike and his whole deal of years long behind-the-lines guerilla wars, the Minotarus or Charcaradons going off Emperor-knows-where as fleet based chapters for decades or centuries without direct resupply, the Imperial Fists and successors being ostensibly siege oriented chapters, the Black Templars engaging in years and decades long crusades (often, if not usually, by themselves), the Abyssal Crusade, the thirty year long Corinthian Crusade, etc.

I mean, they really *should* be bad at these kinds of engagements, but they're written about as engaging in this sort of thing all the time for whatever reason, which really should see them being extirpated at very high rates.

Well, there was that engagement at Vraks where the Dark Angels fought a protracted fire fight at a star port and lost 1/5 of their chapter. They beat the gak out of the Vraksian militia but paid dearly for it.

Transport Thunderhawks, piloted by Serfs and Servitors. Rhino baggage trains. Something like that.

Not sure how fluffy this is since it's more of a game mechanic, but in Dawn of War II squads are replenished by teleporting in reinforcements at strategic points you capture (a little teleporting device pops up). Would make sense for smaller units deployed planetside. It also conveniently explains how SMs can sustain high attrition rates - casualties are quickly teleported back for a patch up and while fresh troops with ammo take their place in the front lines.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Well, there was that engagement at Vraks where the Dark Angels fought a protracted fire fight at a star port and lost 1/5 of their chapter. They beat the gak out of the Vraksian militia but paid dearly for it.

They were caught in an Alpha Legion ambush, so it was more of an astartes on astartes engagement. Astartes usually come out with few casualties despite using tactics like that.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
We have all sorts of examples where Marines engage in extended length sieges and engagements. The Armageddon wars with the Blood Angels/Black Templars/Salamanders engaging in solo operations often for weeks or more at a time, Shrike and his whole deal of years long behind-the-lines guerilla wars, the Minotarus or Charcaradons going off Emperor-knows-where as fleet based chapters for decades or centuries without direct resupply, the Imperial Fists and successors being ostensibly siege oriented chapters, the Black Templars engaging in years and decades long crusades (often, if not usually, by themselves), the Abyssal Crusade, the thirty year long Corinthian Crusade, etc.

I mean, they really *should* be bad at these kinds of engagements, but they're written about as engaging in this sort of thing all the time for whatever reason, which really should see them being extirpated at very high rates.

Well, there was that engagement at Vraks where the Dark Angels fought a protracted fire fight at a star port and lost 1/5 of their chapter. They beat the gak out of the Vraksian militia but paid dearly for it.

Yeah, they show up for a very brief period of time to engage a single target and lose over 200 marines (not counting wounded) in just a few days then peace the feth out, they never go near the primary battle lines. The Red Scorpions show up a couple times just to help old gaps in walls for a few hours and the like, and suffer similarly grievous casualties. Given the resources and time needed to create a Space Marine, that would take a chapter years, if not decades, to recover from, if they were fighting like that with the frequency that SM's are portrayed as doing, they'd be totally destroyed in short order.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
We have all sorts of examples where Marines engage in extended length sieges and engagements. The Armageddon wars with the Blood Angels/Black Templars/Salamanders engaging in solo operations often for weeks or more at a time, Shrike and his whole deal of years long behind-the-lines guerilla wars, the Minotarus or Charcaradons going off Emperor-knows-where as fleet based chapters for decades or centuries without direct resupply, the Imperial Fists and successors being ostensibly siege oriented chapters, the Black Templars engaging in years and decades long crusades (often, if not usually, by themselves), the Abyssal Crusade, the thirty year long Corinthian Crusade, etc.

I mean, they really *should* be bad at these kinds of engagements, but they're written about as engaging in this sort of thing all the time for whatever reason, which really should see them being extirpated at very high rates.

Well, there was that engagement at Vraks where the Dark Angels fought a protracted fire fight at a star port and lost 1/5 of their chapter. They beat the gak out of the Vraksian militia but paid dearly for it.

Yeah, they show up for a very brief period of time to engage a single target and lose over 200 marines (not counting wounded) in just a few days then peace the feth out, they never go near the primary battle lines. The Red Scorpions show up a couple times just to help old gaps in walls for a few hours and the like, and suffer similarly grievous casualties. Given the resources and time needed to create a Space Marine, that would take a chapter years, if not decades, to recover from, if they were fighting like that with the frequency that SM's are portrayed as doing, they'd be totally destroyed in short order.

Isn't Vraks meant to be an exceptionally bad war casualty wise?

pm713 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
We have all sorts of examples where Marines engage in extended length sieges and engagements. The Armageddon wars with the Blood Angels/Black Templars/Salamanders engaging in solo operations often for weeks or more at a time, Shrike and his whole deal of years long behind-the-lines guerilla wars, the Minotarus or Charcaradons going off Emperor-knows-where as fleet based chapters for decades or centuries without direct resupply, the Imperial Fists and successors being ostensibly siege oriented chapters, the Black Templars engaging in years and decades long crusades (often, if not usually, by themselves), the Abyssal Crusade, the thirty year long Corinthian Crusade, etc.

I mean, they really *should* be bad at these kinds of engagements, but they're written about as engaging in this sort of thing all the time for whatever reason, which really should see them being extirpated at very high rates.

Well, there was that engagement at Vraks where the Dark Angels fought a protracted fire fight at a star port and lost 1/5 of their chapter. They beat the gak out of the Vraksian militia but paid dearly for it.

Yeah, they show up for a very brief period of time to engage a single target and lose over 200 marines (not counting wounded) in just a few days then peace the feth out, they never go near the primary battle lines. The Red Scorpions show up a couple times just to help old gaps in walls for a few hours and the like, and suffer similarly grievous casualties. Given the resources and time needed to create a Space Marine, that would take a chapter years, if not decades, to recover from, if they were fighting like that with the frequency that SM's are portrayed as doing, they'd be totally destroyed in short order.

Isn't Vraks meant to be an exceptionally bad war casualty wise?

Well, in terms of modern day war the casualties were tremendous, but in the 40k universe it was a small sideshow conflict on a single back-water world that nobody "big" cared about until near the very end when some major Warp stuff started to happen. in terms of casualties I don't think it was anything particularly special (hooray Grimdark!)

I regard the fluff on spacemarines as imperial propaganda. Assuming that my games are "real", I've wiped out the entire Ultramarines and Spacewolves chapters by now at the cost of a few Orks and IG. Clearly there are tons of space marine chapters and everyone just thinks they are really rare. Sure there are only 1,000 Ultramarines. And I've got a warp gate for sale.

The game is not an accurate reflection of fluff. If it was it would be so broken right now would look perfect.

 EngulfedObject wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Well, there was that engagement at Vraks where the Dark Angels fought a protracted fire fight at a star port and lost 1/5 of their chapter. They beat the gak out of the Vraksian militia but paid dearly for it.

They were caught in an Alpha Legion ambush, so it was more of an astartes on astartes engagement. Astartes usually come out with few casualties despite using tactics like that.

The ambush was at the end of the battle for the starport. They engaged the Vraksian militia for 8 days beforehand. Still, it does show that Marines take grievous losses (Relative to their ability to replace marines) in extended engagements.

one question is does the seige at Vraks say "killed" or "casualties" one thing to consider is Marines are durable eneugh that just because they're out of the fight doesn't mean they won't be able to fight again. between what we know of marine biology, the extensive show case of marines with impressive amounts of cybernetics. and dreadnoughts, there's a lot of evidance that to outright KILL a marine takes some pretty stupid heavy firepower

BrianDavion wrote:
one question is does the seige at Vraks say "killed" or "casualties" one thing to consider is Marines are durable eneugh that just because they're out of the fight doesn't mean they won't be able to fight again. between what we know of marine biology, the extensive show case of marines with impressive amounts of cybernetics. and dreadnoughts, there's a lot of evidance that to outright KILL a marine takes some pretty stupid heavy firepower

They were killed.

 Vaktathi wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
We have all sorts of examples where Marines engage in extended length sieges and engagements. The Armageddon wars with the Blood Angels/Black Templars/Salamanders engaging in solo operations often for weeks or more at a time, Shrike and his whole deal of years long behind-the-lines guerilla wars, the Minotarus or Charcaradons going off Emperor-knows-where as fleet based chapters for decades or centuries without direct resupply, the Imperial Fists and successors being ostensibly siege oriented chapters, the Black Templars engaging in years and decades long crusades (often, if not usually, by themselves), the Abyssal Crusade, the thirty year long Corinthian Crusade, etc.

I mean, they really *should* be bad at these kinds of engagements, but they're written about as engaging in this sort of thing all the time for whatever reason, which really should see them being extirpated at very high rates.

Well, there was that engagement at Vraks where the Dark Angels fought a protracted fire fight at a star port and lost 1/5 of their chapter. They beat the gak out of the Vraksian militia but paid dearly for it.

Yeah, they show up for a very brief period of time to engage a single target and lose over 200 marines (not counting wounded) in just a few days then peace the feth out, they never go near the primary battle lines. The Red Scorpions show up a couple times just to help old gaps in walls for a few hours and the like, and suffer similarly grievous casualties. Given the resources and time needed to create a Space Marine, that would take a chapter years, if not decades, to recover from, if they were fighting like that with the frequency that SM's are portrayed as doing, they'd be totally destroyed in short order.

Isn't Vraks meant to be an exceptionally bad war casualty wise?

Well, in terms of modern day war the casualties were tremendous, but in the 40k universe it was a small sideshow conflict on a single back-water world that nobody "big" cared about until near the very end when some major Warp stuff started to happen. in terms of casualties I don't think it was anything particularly special (hooray Grimdark!)

Most crusading chapters have forge ships, they don't require direct resupply, they can create their own equipment as and when needed. The consumables required will also be taken with them in large stock piles and are probably not that difficult to obtain as and when if needed. In terms of the chapters like the space sharks out in the middle of nowhere, well, according to fluff, they aren't out there alone, they would be able to resupply from rogue traders and the like.

 kestral wrote:
I regard the fluff on spacemarines as imperial propaganda. Assuming that my games are "real", I've wiped out the entire Ultramarines and Spacewolves chapters by now at the cost of a few Orks and IG. Clearly there are tons of space marine chapters and everyone just thinks they are really rare. Sure there are only 1,000 Ultramarines. And I've got a warp gate for sale.

The Ultramarines are a special case. They keep a backup sucessor chapter around, for when they need to replace casualties.
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Genesis_Chapter

Real talk though, marines are tough to kill.
You might defeat them soundly, but as long as they can get their casualties out of there they can likely patch most of them up.
A guardman and a marine might be an adventurer like you and then suffer a plasmashot to the knee, severing most of the leg messily. The wound would cauterise but open again as the soldier hit the ground. The guardman would likely pass out from pain immediately- if not from the shock and impact then from the heat surrounding the plasmabolt scorching his skin and setting his uniform alight. Without medical aid he would bleed out or burn to death.
The Marine's armour will protect him from the worst of the radiated heat and his enhanced blood will instantly clot. He may override the brain's impulse to shut down and continue firing his bolter one handed or allow himself to slip into a healing coma.

If evacuated he'll be fitted with a prosthetic or a cloned leg and fight on next time. If the guardsman survives he will require a long period of medical care and rehabilitation as he gets accustomed to his wheelchair,. crutches, or if he's lucky, a rubbish prosthetic. He will likely be relegated to a support role or released into the nearby civilian populace for care as he will be unable to fight again any time soon. If he's from kreig he'll receive the Emperor's mercy and his gear will be redistributed.

Should he die, a Marine will have his progenoids or remaining progenoid removed and it will take 2 years to create another marine from each progenoid, and 5 years for each of those marines to yield another progenoid and then another 5 years for the last one to mature.
The Adeptus Mechanicus can create 1000 marines in about 55 years from one set of Seed.


Consider that 55 years to replenish a chapter is no time at all for a chapter. They can use excess a single excess progenoid (after replacements and tithe are dealth with) to grow enough seed for 1000 new brothers in just 55 years. This is a constant process and marines are ready to chuck out another brother's gene-y bits 5 years after induction and 10 years after induction.
Meanwhile. back at the fortress, constant hunger games and tournaments are weeding out the weak and selecting the next batch of recruits.
The current batch are training to enter the scout company and the scout company (of no fixed size) is training to replace losses/advancements in the 10th, who are training to replace losses/advancements in the 9th etc.- all the way up to battle companies who are taking the most of the losses, but have 5 companies dedicated to keeping them at full strength.

55 years to grow 1000 warriors is an eternity. In that time, trillions of guardsmen will have been born over two or three generations and countless wars will have been won or lost. For a military outfit that's supposed to constantly be at war, and in the most dangerous and lethal parts of it, 55 years to rebuild a chapter is not realistic to cover even the most minor of losses. Even if we're only talking about a few dozen casualties, that means a couple lost dropships just nuked years or decades worth of reinforcements, likely longer than the lifetime of the conflict, meaning essentially they are a fixed and finite resource for all intents and purposes.

The demands of battle do not really mesh with the presented lifetime of Space Marine stuff at all

 Vaktathi wrote:
55 years to grow 1000 warriors is an eternity. In that time, trillions of guardsmen will have been born over two or three generations and countless wars will have been won or lost. For a military outfit that's supposed to constantly be at war, and in the most dangerous and lethal parts of it, 55 years to rebuild a chapter is not realistic to cover even the most minor of losses. Even if we're only talking about a few dozen casualties, that means a couple lost dropships just nuked years or decades worth of reinforcements, likely longer than the lifetime of the conflict, meaning essentially they are a fixed and finite resource for all intents and purposes.

The demands of battle do not really mesh with the presented lifetime of Space Marine stuff at all

It is the second (being totally wiped out being top) worse case scenario though. If the whole of the US army was wiped out including equipment, how many years do you think it would take to replace, decades? And that is genetically unmodified humans.

The pinch point of the 55 years is the gene seed aspect of marines, if they didn't require other marines to regrow new stock to replenish lost supplies of it, it would be much faster, probably just as fast as training 1000 scions.

Another point is, the Imperium has lost whole chapters before, it has survived that. It would only be if they went and lost a significant amount of chapters at the same time that it would be a disaster.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
55 years to grow 1000 warriors is an eternity. In that time, trillions of guardsmen will have been born over two or three generations and countless wars will have been won or lost. For a military outfit that's supposed to constantly be at war, and in the most dangerous and lethal parts of it, 55 years to rebuild a chapter is not realistic to cover even the most minor of losses. Even if we're only talking about a few dozen casualties, that means a couple lost dropships just nuked years or decades worth of reinforcements, likely longer than the lifetime of the conflict, meaning essentially they are a fixed and finite resource for all intents and purposes.

The demands of battle do not really mesh with the presented lifetime of Space Marine stuff at all

It is the second (being totally wiped out being top) worse case scenario though. If the whole of the US army was wiped out including equipment, how many years do you think it would take to replace, decades? And that is genetically unmodified humans.

to just replace the people and fill positions? A couple of years. Institutional knowledgr loss would hurt, but you can look at armies of the 20th century that filled to 10x or more their original sizes in a year or two and made losses good on top of that for years (particularly things like the US and British armies as they started out in WW1, the Brits effectively lost their entire original army and rebuilt one many times larger in a couple of years).

the pinch point of the 55 years is the gene seed aspect of marines, if they didn't require other marines to regrow new stock to replenish lost supplies of it, it would be much faster, probably just as fast as training 1000 scions.

Scions dont take years for geneseed changed to take hold and have a recruitment pool several orders of magnitude larger, and far more replacable gear. SM's could almost certainly not replace battle casualties and equipment quickly enough to sustain their numbers at the casualty rates seen in the background material, much less have gobs of marines live lifespans triple digits in length.

Another point is, the Imperium has lost whole chapters before, it has survived that. It would only be if they went and lost a significant amount of chapters at the same time that it would be a disaster.

To be quite frank, the Imperium could probably lose all SM chapters and not really notice it if we put scale in its proper context and realize that 1000 chapters of 1000 marines are totally irrelevant on a galactic scale when tens of trillions of normal human soldiers are available, outnumbering each space marine by hundreds of millions, if not billions, to one.

WW1 troops were horrendously under trained, that is not comparable to the modern US forces. The amount of specialist positions and equipment loss would take decades to replace to get it back up to standard.

Scions take years to train though, it's arguably easier to train a marine due to the geneseed effects boosting their capabilities, so their training is comparable time wise is not different, and in some respects it is possibly harder to train a regular human up to the standards of the scion, as all you need to find marine wise is someone who can survive the procedures.

It doesn't matter how many more humans there are in the imperium, you would never get marines in a position to make the numerical numbers really count, and good luck catching them out. The time and resources it would take for the imperium to get the marines in a position that they could wipe them out Abbadon would be sitting on the throne by the end of it. It's a really really really really stupid argument that comes up on here time and again.